The National Pencil Company, 37-41 South Forsyth Street, Atlanta, Georgia, 1908 to 1915

The Corporate Standard of the National Pencil Company, Atlanta, Georgia, Circa 1913

The National Pencil Company, 37-41 South Forsyth Street, Atlanta, Georgia

In the Southern progressive era and the years thereafter, Atlanta was in many ways the unofficial capital of the New South, because it became the biggest focal point for trade, innovative business development, manufacturing industry, and rapid real estate development. Moreover, metro Atlanta was especially attractive for its relatively comfortable climate with long seasons of spring and fall weather and reasonably mild winters compared with the North, which more than compensated for the worst hot, choking, and humid summer days. In the period after the Civil War in the late 19th and early 20th century, the cities of the South underwent the throes of transformation from an agrarian society toward an industrial revolution and urban life. Atlanta attracted a wave of low-wage laborers, migrating from the vastly rural surrounding areas of struggling tenement farmlands.

“Post Civil War from 1865 to 1915, the South went through growing-pains transitioning away from a predominantly farm economy toward modernization.”

Atlanta’s population surge was the natural response to the hopes and dreams of families and people seeking out a better quality of life. However, for most, no great dreams were fulfilled in Atlanta, because crime, poverty, and malnutrition were rife, but the seemingly limitless supply of cheap labor provided a source of opportunity for creative entrepreneurs and industrialists who inspired a great flow of investment capital, especially from the North. There was a truly libertarian capitalist spirit in Atlanta, one that enticed people of every walk of life, including faraway carpetbaggers and copperheads with their own opportunistic and romantic visions about the South.

The Real Atlanta of 1913

Despite the overwhelmingly predominant white separatist Christian conservative culture of the South, 1913 Atlanta was vibrant and nothing at all like a stale or boring city. One could find a wide range of religious, government, independent, social, and political events of every sort, from parades, conferences, celebrations, and sporting events, to cultural activities, like the visiting Metropolitan Opera (that easily sold out beyond capacity). Even on a shoestring budget, there was no shortage of places to visit from Atlanta’s parks to the picture show. One only had to look, since something was almost always going on in Atlanta.

Vice and Carnal Pleasure

Tobacco was dirt cheap, and smokey saloons, cabarets, blind tigers, and underground fly-by-night gambling halls were literally everywhere. Within them all, endless rivers of alcoholic libations, levies holding back barrels of whiskey, and wine bottles were tipping and flowing waterfalls from pluming bottle tops, clacking glasses, and plumbing beer taps flowing. The pharmacies had opiates and stimulants of every kind without the need of ingratiating oneself for a doctor’s prescription, and the unstepped-on cocaine from South America was par excellente.

Poverty and Prostitution

Aside for the major crackdowns on the red-light district to appease the preachers and physicians dealing with an unspoken epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases (STD), the local government seemed indifferent and often looked the other way at prostitution, including — sadly enough — child prostitution, which was the dirty little secret that Atlanta tolerated, ignored, or pretended didn’t exist to varying degrees. Child prostitution in its many forms was mostly rampant in all major US cities up until the early 20th century.

Particularly, Atlanta’s brothels were brimming with poor teenage farm girls and boys who had been ground down in the mills and factories. Some of these child prostitutes were orphans, and others were kicked out of their homes by abusive or alcoholic fathers. Some had been raped by family members, and others had simply been kidnapped or drugged and beaten into submission, which was the traditional way of turning out children into the lifestyle of prostitution.

Atlanta, like most big cities, was sometimes a seedy brutal place under the surface, this despite the predominant facade of Christian society and reputation for Southern hospitality.

Southern Jewry

Despite its challenges, for thousands of Jewish families, the South was the promised land of milk and honey, because within the white racial segregationist culture, anti-Semitism was virtually nonexistent. As a result, the vast majority of Jews, who have always been traditionally racially conscious, felt at home and fit in seamlessly, thus assimilating easily.

Jews played a significant role in the South, participating more proportionate to their numbers in the population inside government, education, media, business, society, politics, and law. Small Jewish businesses became big Jewish businesses, and Jewish-Gentile relations in the South were peaceful and respectful for the most part, until 1913, when the Leo Frank case inaugurated a rift between Jews and Gentiles that opened old tribal and ethnic wounds that had been festering and smoldering under the surface for centuries.

This, in a fragment of a nutshell, was the Atlanta of 1913.

The NPCo in 1913

The National Pencil Company (NPCo), born April 8, 1908, was a Jewish-owned manufacturing aggregate with its business office and factory headquarters (HQ) in a four-story building located on 37-41 South Forsyth Street in the heart of Atlanta’s industrial sector. The factory was formerly the Venable Hotel and, for a short time, the Granite Hotel. In physical size, each of the four floors, plus an earthen floor basement, were fourteen feet high, eighty feet wide, and two hundred feet long.

In 1913, the NPCo had more than 170 employees–more girls than boys, according to Leo Frank (State’s Exhibit B, April 28, 1913). Most of the laborers at the NPCo were preteen and teenaged children who worked ten-hour shifts five days week and a half day on Saturday, toiling for mere pennies an hour. Atlanta unofficially allowed children as young as eight to ten years old to work in factories and mills. At the NPCo, most of the employees were in the age range of eleven to sixteen years, which was considered acceptable at the time. Given the widespread extreme poverty, people tended to look the other way, begrudgingly and indignant, for practical reasons.

In total, the National Pencil Company had three subsidiaries: the slat wood mill, which processed cedar into polygonal pencil shafts; the bell lead smelting plant, which produced the thin lead rods inserted in the center of the pencil shafts; and the NPCo factory HQ, where the final assembly occurred, before the packaged boxes containing gross pencil inventory were shipped out to various middlemen and direct clients.

Jewish-Gentile Business and Social Relations in the Progressive Era

The National Pencil Company symbolized a productive time in the early twentieth century when business owners, regardless of whether they were Jew or Gentile, lived and worked together, side by side, harmoniously. Numerous notable Leo Frank persecution activists like Leonard Dinnerstein and Elaine Marie Alphin, for example, have attempted to paint the South as rampant with anti-Semitism and the Frank case as a widespread Gentile-instigated, anti-Jewish ethnoreligious conspiracy, but their racist slander cannot be substantiated by the historical record or the complete surviving legal archives of the trial and appeals, local newspaper reports of the time, and consensus among reliable historians and scholars. The charges of anti-Semitism waged against Southerners is bigotry against a whole people, but you won’t hear about this racist anti-Gentile smear from the Jewish Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith that perpetuates its own hoax claiming Southerners shouted chants, “Hang the Jew” and “Kill the Jew,” into the courtroom windows at the jury during the Leo Frank trial.

The 20th Century Sweatshop Made in the USA

The conditions in most of Atlanta’s industrial manufacturing plants and mills were considered horrendous even by 1913 standards. By 2013, they are seen as the equivalent to third-world child labor sweatshops, but the wages were, relatively speaking, significantly higher in the mills and factories than they were on the rural farms outside of Atlanta, where people spent most of their days toiling in the soil under the elements for far less money. The major cities of Georgia offered poor farming families more opportunities, higher wages, and a better quality of life, compared to the rural and tenement farms subject to the unpredictable cycles of weather and wiles of market speculations. Urban life seemed to exacerbate malnutrition. Some of the malnutrition of child laborers, who left for work before dawn and returned home after sunset, had a lot to do with the lack of sunlight they received, which is transformed by the skin into vitamin D, an essential molecule.

How It All Began: Big Opportunities in the South, Briefly in 1907, and Five Years on the Ground between 1908 to 1913

Leo Frank’s wealthy world-traveling uncle Moses Frank had suggested to his nephew Leo that he should consider getting involved in a potentially lucrative opportunity and participate on some level in the management, upkeep, and maintenance of a new manufacturing venture in the works, pencil manufacturing in Atlanta, Georgia. The venture was one that Moses had just invested in, and Leo Frank was the perfect contender to join the venture. He had an engineering degree, and it would be most useful and valuable to have a loyal family member on the team keeping an eye on things.

Moses Frank made his golden nest egg from cotton oil speculation, and it was time to make another, because being on permanent vacation and traveling around the world can drain the coffers. Moses was a vibrant older man, but thought to be blind by 1908 (Koenigsberg, LeoFrankCase.com, 2012). As the revered undeclared patriarch of the Frank clan, he was highly respected by their extended family and associates in NYC and Atlanta.

October 1907: Life-Changing Event, Atlanta and European Sojourn

In the middle of October 1907, Uncle Moses and associates invited Leo Frank down Atlanta, the burgeoning jewel of the South. It was a part pleasure and part family outing, but ultimately, an important business meeting occurred when all was said and done. Moses offered his nephew the opportunity of a lifetime, suggesting that Leo stop working for other people and making them rich and, instead, come to work for a newly born family-associated business. Tragically, the genius idea of opening a pencil manufacturing plant could have been a shining star in Southern Jewish history, but instead, it will always be remembered as the collapse of Jewish-Gentile relations in the South.

Defense leader Luther Rosser in a loud and arrogant basso voice would describe it as a vile hole in his closing argument at the end of the Leo Frank capital murder trial, August 1913.

Frank thought it over and ultimately agreed. After spending two weeks getting a little taste of Atlanta, he returned to NYC briefly and then embarked on a long and bitterly cold Atlantic journey across that dark-wine Homeric ocean to the country or conglomeration historically known at the time as the “German Empire” — his father Rudolph Frank’s immediate ancestral homeland in Europe. In December 1907, Frank began a nine-month apprenticeship in Germany to study pencil manufacturing under the tutelage of Eberhard Faber.

Today Eberhard Faber is a name found commonly on pencils, pens, and erasers in contemporary and not so far away historical times. Faber built the first U.S. pencil factory in 1861 and was the last in a family of lead pencil manufacturers dating back to Kasper Faber, who died in 1784.

August 1, 1908

After a ten-day Atlantic trip across the ocean, on August 1, 1908, Leo Frank arrived in the United States on Ellis Island from the port of departure, Cherbourg, France. Leo Frank made his voyage to Ellis Island on the The Kaiser Wilhelm II (Built by Vulcan-Werke, Stettin, Germany, launched in 1903; 19,361 gross tons; 707 [bp] feet long; 72 feet wide. Steam quadruple expansion engines, twin screw. Service speed 23 knots. 1,888 passengers [775 first class, 343 second class, 770 third class]. Four funnels and three masts. Built for North German Lloyd, German flag, in 1902 [start date] and named Kaiser Wilhelm II. Bremen, Southampton, Cherbourg and New York service. Laid up by U.S. authorities, in 1914. Seized by United States Navy, American flag, in 1917 and renamed USS Agamemnon for troopship service. Transferred to U.S. civilian shipping board, in 1919 and renamed Monticello. Scrapped at Baltimore in 1940 [Ellis Island Ship Manifest Records, 1908]).

After his epic journey from Germany, Leo M. Frank returned to NYC to kiss and hug his mom and dad and give noogies to his “baby sister” Marian J. but did not stay long. He left his home in Brooklyn, New York, and permanently relocated with many of his belongings Atlanta, Georgia. He departed from Pennsylvanian Station on August 4 and arrived at Terminal Station in Atlanta, Georgia, on August 6, 1908. Leo Frank settled in at a local hotel (Oney 2003) until he could find permanent lodging in Atlanta. On Monday, August 10, 1908, Frank received a medium-level entry position at the National Pencil Company, and he embraced it wholeheartedly. Hitting the ground running, he was determined to climb the corporate ladder. With hard work and dedication, Leo Frank vigorously moved up the ranks in respect, building trust and a developing a reputation for punctuality and meticulousness in managing the two sets of books.

With New York style energy, he shone bright as a Jewish star in the Southern sky. In time, Frank was promoted to superintendent, accountant, treasurer, and part owner of the National Pencil Company, located in what at the time what was considered the heart of Atlanta, Georgia, the unofficial capital of the South.

In Time, Rising to Superintendent, Accountant, Treasurer, and Employee Payer Par Excellence

When Frank became superintendent of the 37 – 39 – 41 S. Forsyth Street, National Pencil Company factory, his responsibilities included purchasing supplies and machinery, managing the accounting books, overseeing factory operations, paying off employees, and insuring the final production quality exceeded that of competitors, and business was booming.

Leo Frank was also made a part-time general supervisor of the Pencil Lead plant on Bell Street and an associate supervisor of the Slat Cedar Mill that produced the pencil shafts. Frank had a lot of responsibilities and worked long hours, and his well-educated mathematical brain was put to good use. And as a result, his accounting and management skills grew with little effort, and the company was automated, stream-lined, and optimized under the best possible circumstances at the time.

The Creepy Boss with the Rattling Cash Box

Leo Frank was diligently focused on work flow minutiae and efficiency. Therefore, his upward mobility at the pencil factory was reflective and worthy of him. He worked for nearly five years, reaching the heights of prominence, leadership, and responsibility at the apogee of his career while he was in the prime of his life at the young age of twenty-nine, and during his nearly half-decade (August 10, 1908 to April 28, 1913) of public, private, and philanthropic service, he had developed a reputation amongst the general public as a leader with promising potential.

Leo Frank’s rich uncle Moses Frank was proud of his young nephew and saw him as the perfect man to command the helm of the NPCo factories and its subsidiaries on the ground. In general, Leo Frank exhibited all the desirable qualities of leadership–punctual, hardworking, obsessive-compulsive, good at math, and punctilious when it came to managing staff and machinery maintenance, paying attention to the details of the company work flow, keeping meticulous accounting books, keeping the company optimized.

Wages are the biggest expense in a company, and Leo Frank monitored time cards fanatically accounting for every minute. This was just one variable that made business so successful. From its conception in 1907 and beginnings in 1908, the National Pencil Company had become a powerhouse by 1913, primarily because of Leo Frank. Although Frank was a rock star at running the business show, the occasional dressing down or scoldings he received from the NPCo Treasurer Sigmund Montag every now and again ensured he stepped back in line.

There was, however, a serious underlying problem in the work force with sexual harassment, but such complaints were rarely given public voice. If the rumors and allegations were an approximation of the truth, Leo Frank had a dark, naughty, perverted, fetishesque, and kinky side to him. The perception of his character amongst many preteen and teenage girls who formerly had labored under him at the factory suggested Leo Frank was an aggressive, creepy boss, one whose “claws” emerged a little too often. Leo Frank got just a wee bit too close for comfort if you know what I mean, but Frank could be very subtle sometimes too. Naturally, given Frank’s position in the limelight of prominence within the Jewish community as B’nai B’rith president, his high-profile position at the factory, and his relatively new marriage, Leo Frank live with constant reminders that he had to have some semblance of stealthiness concerning his naughty side. He certainly wasn’t a fool after all, and he knew, consciously and unconsciously, he had to try to maintain some measure of self-control and furtiveness for his lascivious nature.

Population and Labor Surge

In the South, poverty was rife at the turn of the century, and many parents had to send their children into the work force to make ends meet. As a result, an over abundance of cheap child labor was available in Atlanta during the early decades of the 20th century, mainly because of the painful swings in the prices of farm commodities resulted in the flow of big families from the farms into the cities. Surging with hormones, naive, starry-eyed farm girls who sought a better life flocked to the numerous urban areas of Georgia, far away from the dull existence on the “slow” and boring rural fields, toiling away for three to five cents an hour.

Child Laborers

In 1913, Atlanta mills and factories were swarming with svelte young farm girls and boys, as well as the children from poor families forced to leave school and work at the early ages of eight to ten.

The lean muscle, bespectacled, and handsome nerd known as Leo Frank was always testing and making couched sexual propositions to a careful selection of his preteen and teenage girls working at the factory. They claimed Frank made “implied” innuendos, naughty suggestions, and lecherous stares, and he was even caught leering at them in the dressing room. At times winking at the young girls working for him, Leo Frank often became too familiar with some of them. There were other allegations against Leo Frank besides subtle sexual harassment. The factory was being used as a rendezvous for in-call and out-call prostitution under the winking eye of Leo Frank. Amongst the hormone-raging teens who filled the factory and adult men who managed them, things were going on in the factory that would not have been considered moral then or now. Moreover, men in positions of power and status at the factory would have naturally attracted some of the girls working there to sexual experimentation. Historically speaking, power and status seems to be the ultimate aphrodisiac regardless of age, status, or class.

Under Leo Frank’s tutelage, after-work Dionysian orgies and stress-relief parties involving booty, bubbles, and beer occasionally occurred during the workweek and Saturday. The gloomy, poorly lit basement was one of the kinky places couples were allowed to rendezvous. In general, the factory could be interpreted as becoming the work hard and play hard fiefdom for Lord Leo Frank in a roundabout way. Even N. V. Darley, another married man, was seen with a young girl at the movies on Confederate Memorial Day (Koenigsberg 2011). What a married man was doing squiring around a young girl at the factory spoke of the corporate culture of the NPCo flagship operation on 37-41 South Forsyth Street. Perhaps its subsidiaries, the Bell Lead Plant and the Cedar processing plant, were congruent.

Wall to Wall, Row to Row, Column to Column

The jammed row houses of fire hazard humping and pumping brothels were just around the corner from the pencil factory, bursting at the seams with child prostitutes, teenage hookers, and fresh street meat. Not so ironically, the National Pencil Company factory was once a bedbug-ridden sweaty place called the Granite Hotel where grandpa dirties and horn dog men of all ages, for that matter, could get their rocks off on the side and bring home STDs to their unfortunate and unsuspecting wives toiling away at home. The bordellos were filled with poor, naive, and worn-out farm girls and child laborers who had been ground down in the slave pits of the malicious “meat grinding” mills and filthy factories, working for just pennies an hour. Many of these unfortunate children were finally turned out for dollars at a time, and once many of them realized they could make a week’s wages in a single day of turning tricks, they stuck to it. Like all things in life, and in the universal cosmos, there are circles, ups-and-downs, and waves. Farming was no different. It was periodical, and during major droughts, sales were down and the cities would be flooded with farm girls and boys looking for any work at any wages available. Child prostitution was an unfortunate part of a city surging in population, where severe poverty was rife, and the testosterone-fueled sexual energy was always high. Though on its best day, Atlanta didn’t have even a fraction of the numerical whoring available as NYC did at the time, but pound for pound, Atlanta had more.

Rattle the Money Box: “How About It?”

In a slapstick sort of way, Frank was also allegedly often making inappropriate sexual innuendos with the cash box in his office, sitting in his swivel chair, with his long legs spread like a turkey wishbone, slapping his knees together, rattling the swollen cash box on the table, smirking, grinning, winking, and saying, “how ’bout it?” to the girls. Though sexual harassment was no stranger to women in the history of female labor, it was often the biggest complaint in the factories, mills, and industrial sweatshops of the 20th century. The number of preteen and teenaged girls sexually molested and raped in these horrendous environments are unimaginable and uncountable. The temptation was always there on both sides of the gender divide in terms of hormones flaring, and turning out girls was a game that in today’s urban areas is called, “the crown and the jewels.”

Leo Frank’s Character for Lasciviousness Was Bad

Frank’s character would be described by more than thirteen of the girls and other factory workers, who testified against him, saying Frank was, what amounted to a lascivious (sexually aggressive) pedophile — even though the first use of the word pedophile is thought to be 1952, it was implied. Others suggested Leo Frank was a frequent dabbler in lite whoring. Though the word pedophile did not exist at the time, this description was vividly implied, because more than a baker’s dozen employees and former laborers of the National Pencil Company made specific allegations during the Leo Frank trial (July 28 to August 25, 26, 1913). Even more affidavits supporting these notions would emerge after the trial between 1913 and 1915 (See the Georgia Supreme Court Case File on Leo Frank, 1913, 1914). Indeed, after the trial, to counter the claims of the Leo Frank defense that the accusations against Leo Frank were false, Dorsey went ahead and secured more affidavits supporting Frank’s pedophile and naughty-naughty tendencies, including one about a young girl who was knocked up by Frank, and another revealed a very kinky, sexually aggressive side of Leo Frank, who sunk his teeth into the inner most thigh of a little girl, scarifying her — she lived to tell what happened (See the Georgia Supreme Court Case File on Leo Frank, 1913, 1914).

Leo Frank Was into Bruise Biting

Apparently, Frank was into sadist teeth-to-flesh sexual foreplay, leaving teeth marks and bruises on a little teenage girl he had turned out. Perhaps the young degenerate’s DNA has lived on after all, not through his infertile wife who couldn’t conceive after three years of manual procreation, but the sweet young naive lass he debauched at the factory. Perhaps Leo Frank infected his wife with an STD that prevented her from reproducing; such is not uncommon throughout history.

At Least Ten to One Ratio: People Attesting to Leo Frank’s Good Character vs. Bad Character for Lasciviousness

A lot more people came forward to say Frank was not a horny and frisky licentious boss with perpetual wood in his pants, taking advantage of his position and power, but the quantity and numbers game could not save Frank in this situation, because of the “quality” and closeness of those speaking out against him.

Pedophile, Like Accusing People of Racism: Guilty until Proven Innocent

The accusation people use today when they want to destroy, smear, and defame you is to call you a racist or anti-Semite, or pedophile. It’s a sad reality, but in a situation where a girl claims naughty overtures by the boss or any man for that matter, he is almost certainly socially considered guilty before innocent.

How Many Witnesses Corroborated Leo Frank’s Naughty Tendencies?

Dorsey put the number at nineteen verifiers in his closing arguments (Dorsey, August 1913), making it somewhat nearly impossible to counter that the lascivious tendencies were not true — no matter how many character witnesses Leo Frank “bussed down” from New York. The claims of some of his female employees essentially amounted to pouring a cup of hemlock on his murder trial and poisoning it. Leo Frank was not on trial for pedophilia, adultery, sexual harassment, or whoring. The Leo Frank defense team would argue that bringing up Frank’s pedophilia and whoring rampages had no place at the trial, because he was not on trial to determine if he was a sexual predator. However, the prosecution brought it up only after the defense made the blunder of bringing up Leo Frank’s character. The rule at the time is that you couldn’t challenge the honor of one’s character until the defense brought it up first, and they did–big mistake. Once the defense gave the green light, Frank’s lascivious and licentious character became an issue by the prosecution to show Frank’s propensities and tendencies for sexual aggression and whoring as a probable segue for the theory regarding why he murdered Phagan, and it helped the prosecution build their case. It wiped out over one hundred character witnesses Leo Frank had bussed down from the Northeast, including teachers and associates from the Pratt Institute of Brooklyn and Cornell University. It seemed odd that Frank had to bus in truck loads of Northerners, because the jury would naturally wonder why Frank, who lived in the South for five years, would be unable to bring in more local support, people from Atlanta and the surrounding area. After all, five years in Atlanta is a long time, and Frank’s local showing was average at best.

Seasoned Partier

Steve Oney puts Leo Frank’s height at 5’6″ (Oney 2003), but according to Frank’s passport application, he was 5’8″. At 155 lbs of lean muscle, Frank could hang with the best of them — no pun intended — his liver was clad in iron, well trained and seasoned from years of Jewish frat parties at college and he certainly enjoyed the unlicensed “speakeasies” and underground gambling and poker halls of NYC, not to mention swilling the exquisite beer of Germania during his nine-month stint. Moreover, as a whoring aficionado, Frank certainly delighted in sampling the novelty of Germany’s whores in the half underground half above ground red light district. Frank proudly earned his international whoring wings in his father’s “ancestral homeland” of Germania to crown off his escapades in New York City and eventually his new hometown staple of bordellos headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

Frank, a tobacco aficionado, loved to ruminate and bogart cigarettes or puff away on his pipe, and to wash it all down, he guzzled black coffee by the pot during work hours. When the workday was over at 6:30 p.m., inaugurating the evening, he would wind down with beer, whiskey, wine, and loose women, to top off the long stressful days. It was all just a phone call away.

Nina Formby

Leo Frank’s favorite mamasan and concierge worked just a few blocks away from the National Pencil Company, in the area of Atlanta that was packed wall to wall with bedbug-infested child brothels. A simple phone call from his private inner office to the mischievous Nina Formby ensured in-call delivery service could be ordered directly to his second floor office for a dollar plus tips.

Frank loved to sample and dabble in the endless experienced or fresh meat constantly churning, burning, humping, pumping, and grinding through the “blink and look the other way” Atlanta red light district.

Frank had some major hormone issues and mental imbalances. It’s not clear if it was genetic or from excessive consumption (too much substance abuse), or both. However, he clearly had these problems at times, as illustrated by the numerous pictures of him looking like a psychotic serial killer with his bulging eyes, which seemed to swallow you and even sparkle like black diamonds as Jim Conley described (BOE, James Conley, August, 1913). At times, Leo’s eyes appeared hyperthyroid, which might reveal more about his physiology, psychology, and personality than meets the eyes (no pun intended).

Barring Leo Frank’s Flaws

Aside from Frank’s lascivious behavior against his preteen and teenage girl employees, after work and Saturday drunken debauchery, swings of mentally and hormonally imbalanced states — Frank was exactly the kind of guy you wanted to run your factory, because barring his serious flaws, he was a work-hard-play-hard kind of leader, early to work and late to get home (not always late because of work, though it provided a good excuse). What also made Leo Frank really valuable is that he kept obsessive-compulsive detailed records and two sets of accounting books. Leo Frank monitored employee time cards religiously down to the minute. He was a human calculator and time clock with superb memory after nearly five years of brute force calculating at the factory nearly sixty hours a week. Frank could be relied on as he was always punctual, but at a salary of $150 a month (six times the salary James Jim Conley, who made eleven cents an hour plus tips). Mary Phagan was making $4.05 a week. To put these wages in perspective, since the FED’s inception in 1913, $1 then was worth the same as $23 in 2011. The buying power has been eroded by inflation — over printing.

Light Embezzling

Based on the company books, Frank was likely embezzling money using the 1/11 technique. Where employees were given salaries in whole numbers and fractional 1/11 pennies, an aggregate was on the books, but the pinching came when the salaries were paid. For instance, Mary Phagan made 7 and 4/11 cents. Obviously, you can’t pay someone 1/11 or 4/11 cents, so when there were variations in hours, you can see where there was skimming opportunities with more than one hundred employees.

Frank dipped into in the company coffers to finance his binging and whoring rampages, and apparently, it went unnoticed. After all, Leo managed the accounting books, and the light embezzlement didn’t raise any suspicions or the eyebrows of Moses Frank or Sigmond Montag. The surviving records and invoices of the National Pencil Company show money was flowing in like it was going out of style. With plenty of money in and pencil stock out, the numbers were growing quickly in the factory bank account, and sales reports reflected they were sometimes grossing $2,500+ to $5,000+ a week in orders, which was not bad by 1913 standards.

Leo Frank the General Superintendent

Aside from a little frisky-frisky and naughty-naughty on the side during occasional evenings and Saturdays that might put Leo Frank’s reputation at risk, most of his employees liked him, and he held the company together despite its many complicated variables that had to be managed. Frank’s creepy innuendos toward his employees never became an issue because the girls who were uncomfortable with it would move on, the ones turned out ended up at the brothels up the street, and the ones who tolerated it stayed and put up with it grudgingly and stoically. Leo wasn’t after all the girls either; he was subtle and very selective. The official trial record has numerous laborer teenage girls who became former employees because of Leo Frank’s sexual harassment, and if you think about, it didn’t matter, as there was an infinite supply of new young meat that needed a job.

Noon, April 26, 1913

In a shuttered factory on Confederate Memorial Day, Saturday, April 26, 1913, Leo Frank was wrapping up some last-minute paperwork, with the intention to do some afternoon whoring and then calling it a day to go to see a baseball game with his brother-in-law. However, things took a wrong turn. Thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan came in to the factory to receive her pay, $1.20, from a previously shortened week that ended the Monday before on April 21, 1913. Phagan was one of Leo Frank’s child laborers at the factory. She was cute, with lovely blue eyes, and was very well developed for her age. She had been laid off the previous Monday because supplies of brass ran out. The brass was processed, formed into bands around the ends of pencils, and used to hold erasers to the final product, and when the brass had intermittently ran out, some of the four girls in the metal room had to be temporarily laid off. Phagan worked in the metal room’s tipping department, inserting erasers into the metal bands of the erasers, and because metal had run out, she was laid off until the supplies, which acted as a “dependency,” were replenished.

Dorsey Called It a Species of Coercion

Frank allegedly lured Mary Phagan just down the hall from his second-floor office into the metal room, which was where she had toiled endlessly for the last year at her workstation. It was theorized, based on the testimony of Jim Conley and circumstantial evidence, that Frank convinced Phagan to follow him to the metal room on the false pretense of seeing if the brass metal supplies had arrived, and thus determining whether or not Phagan would have her job back on the following Monday morning. Once alone inside the metal room with Phagan, Frank quietly closed the door and securely locked it. And according to Hugh M. Dorsey in his closing remarks, Leo Frank–using her laid-off, half-unemployed status and potential job prospects on Monday, April 28, 1913, as a species of coercion and manipulation (Dorsey, August 1913)–bluntly demanded sex from Mary Phagan, that is, if she wanted her job back, but when Phagan resisted him and tried to escape, he grabbed her, bludgeoned her by pounding her in the face with his fist. After that, he lifted her up and slammed her (Conley 1913) against the handle of the lathe, where her hair broke off and was spotted by an employee Barret et al Monday morning, August 28, 1913, and affirmed by numerous other employees who knew Phagan after they too saw it. Then, he supposedly dragged Phagan into the bathroom of the metal room while she was unconscious, lifted her skirt up, ripped or cut open her underwear, and raped her thirteen-year-old virgin vagina, rupturing her hymen and leaving her torn-up undergarments bloodied, according to the physical evidence retrieved from Phagan by the undertaker and presented at the trial (BOE, 1913). Finally, Frank grabbed a nearby cord used to tie the boxes of pencils and garroted Phagan’s tender throat until she suffocated and died of brain damage.

A follow-up clean-up job ensued, once Leo regained his composure.

Mary Phagan’s strangulation became a national scandal once its discovery hit the media’s press machines, and it became a cause celeb for the Jewish community, who feared being disgraced because a high-profile member of their group might have committed such a heinous crime against one of a child.

According to Leo Frank’s own statements and behavior, which some say collectively amounted to virtual admissions on April 27 together with April 28 (see State’s Exhibit B in the Brief of Evidence 1913), April 30, and August 18 (see the unconscious bathroom segue confession), the beating, pedophile-rape and child-murder of Mary Phagan occurred between “12:05 to 12:10, maybe 12:07” or possibly “12:10 and 12:15,” and with the absolute time range being 12:03 to 12:15.

Murderer?

To be fair, Frank might not have had premeditated murder in his heart when his ulterior motives inspired persuading Phagan to accompany him to the metal room to see if the supplies had come in, but in his overpowering attempt to turn her out, he knew unconsciously he had no choice but to permanently silence her. After all, if she had reported that he violently forced himself on her, rape or not (rape-escape), the consequences would have been severe. It was well known in those days when white people weren’t deracinated from their racial consciousness that there was the risk of mob vigilante justice, which at times included castration with rusty tools without anesthesia, followed by lynching for rapists or attempted rapists. Even if Frank did not hypothetically end in that fate because of his influence and access to other people’s wealth, he knew either way his career, reputation, marriage, and the factory would have been permanently ruined if it was revealed. Mary Phagan’s last breath was around 12:05 +/-.

After Leo Frank Murdered Mary Phagan

Based on interpretations and recollections of Jim Conley’s statements:

Frank asked his roustabout, lackey, and watchdog Negro custodian, Jim (James) Conley (also spelled Connolly depending on the source), who made eleven cents an hour or more than $6 a week, to dump the body of Phagan in the rear of the basement in front of an over-sized furnace. It was normally used or burning trash, but now the stage had been set with the unspoken intention of later asking Jim Conley (James Connolly) to stuff Mary Phagan into the oven to cremate her and erase the evidence. When Frank and Jim Conley went back to Leo’s second-floor office, Frank allegedly asked James Connolly to ghostwrite murder notes, as if they were actually being written by Mary Phagan while she was in the middle of being raped and killed by the night watchman, Newt Lee, an honest hard-working Negro employee who would be at the factory in the late afternoon to begin his security guard rounds. Leo Frank, the day before, had told Newt to come in an hour early.

Blame It on the Night Watchman Newt Lee (The Night Witch)

The contrived murder notes evolved the Mary Phagan murder investigation into one of the most shocking and embarrassingly botched attempts in U.S. history, by a person trying to third-party frame and railroad the violently heinous rape and murder on an innocent Negro (Negro is the term they used back then to describe Afro-Americans), Leo Frank’s graveyard shift employee, an African-American named Newt Lee, who was setup to be the scapegoat for Phagan’s murder (according to Jim Conley).

Later at the trial, Newt Lee, who had been working at the factory as the nightwatchman for three weeks, would have some very interesting sworn testimony to provide about Leo M. Frank’s unusual behavior on that infamous day of April 26 1913. And even Leo Frank would not fully counter or explain away Lee’s testimony during his August 18, 1913 trial statement. Newt Lee also told the police that the factory was being used by couples to have evening trysts.

Down Payment of a Half Pack of Cigarettes, Two Paper Dollars, and Two Silver Quarters, $200 Promised

Frank allegedly handed Conley a $200 payment, took it away when the janitor resisted, and then offered it again, but as a potential post-payment if Jim Conley would go downstairs stuff the dead little girl into the giant cellar oven and burn the evidence. But Connolly was hesitant, saying he would only do it if Frank helped. For some reason, Frank wanted Connolly to do it alone and would not assist him. Frank explained that if he didn’t get caught and if Connolly would do the job, he would pay him the money during the week.

Frank gave Connolly a small down payment of cash and smokes, telling him to light up, but Jim Conley later left the factory with the $2.50 and a half-pack of cigarettes, that Frank had given him as a small down payment on the $200 bribe offering, without doing the final dirty work.

Frank sternly, firmly and directly ordered Jim Conley to come back later and finish the clean up job, including specific hints that Jim Conley must finish the makeshift crematorium work of burning Phagans body if he wanted to get the $200 at a later time. Jim Conley didn’t accept or reject the job, but got spooked, left the factory after Leo Frank left and went drinking across the street before going Home and falling asleep – not waking up until mid day Sunday. Had Jim Conley done what Leo Frank had told him to do, this article might not exist today. Based on different accounts, Frank left the factory to go home for a late lunch between 1:10 and 1:20, arriving at his home at about 1:30, he was nauseous and lost his appetite, stayed for about 10 minutes, didn’t eat anything and then left to go back into town. Frank silently prayed to himself, hoping that Jim Conley was doing the erasure of evidence deed. Jim Conley never came back, can you blame him?

Frank Had the Worst Case of Butterflies in his Stomach

Leo Frank returned to the factory after his late low calorie “lunch” of allegedly eating nothing and his stomach was twisting in knots. Frank waited around desperately for Jim Conley to return promptly, on the promise of $200 in Greenbacks, that is if Jim would incinerate the body, but when Jim Conley never came back that late afternoon, Frank was Freaking out and became nauseously terrified and more nervous, agitated, frenetic and excited then ever, and in a last pitched act of desperation, Frank snatched the contrived murder notes he had dictated to Jim Conley he had him scrawl up earlier, and scattered them next to Phagan’s body in the gloom of the basement. It is not clear, why Frank did not attempt to stuff the bloody body of Phagan into the oven himself and attempt to destroy the evidence. Although Phagan was a low chunky girl at 4’11” she easily weighed 115 to 120lbs, almost as much as Leo Frank at 5’8″ and 135lbs and the dirt floor basement was absolutely filthy, covered wall to wall in black charred soot and cinders. Frank being a bit of a premadonna was smart and cautiously would have avoided getting unnecessarily dirty and stain himself up with filth and possibly blood in a way he could not explain away when he went home to his big fat wife (as he described his own wife). Had skinny Leo Frank tried to stuff that heavy little girl in the oven, A sarcastic moment… Lucille might say: Honey, why does your handsome suit have some blood and soot stains all over it? Frank might reply: Oh, I don’t know pumpkin, just a busy day on the job at the quiet office on this State holiday violently raping little girls and then strangling them off for good measure so they can’t snitch. Fortunately Frank was wearing a brown suit at work, brown is the best color in the world for hiding stains, but the premadonna wanted to be as far from the body as possible. Frank then went back upstairs to possibly resume a poorly and partly consummated clean up job in the metal room that his step-and-fetch-it Jim Conley had not done a very good job, but possibly being a little bit of a premadonna it is unlikely he would have made much effort, for the same reasons he had not wanted to touch the nasty twisted and disheveled body in the basement that his actions in the metal room had earlier created.

If You’re Gonna Murder Someone, At Least Do a Good Clean Up Job

Since they didn’t have CSI at the time, Frank didn’t know any better, his training was in engineering, not forensic murder cover-up. In the second floor metal room there appeared to be a really badly executed clean up job, which included smearing and rubbing haskolene into the blood stains left by Mary Phagans head when she was accidentally dropped on the floor during her removal process. The haskolene smearing appeared to be a cover up attempt to hide the murder evidence as best as possible, but the blood clearly showed through the bungled erasure attempt. It was a major blunder, and Frank should have just had his Step-and-fetch-it Jim Conley use good old fashioned hot water, soap and a scrub brush. It was likely that Frank had the Janitor do the half-assed clean up job and that Jim did a half-heartedly poor job or was just simply unable to hide the soaked in blood stains on the metal room floor, so they were smeared with haskolene.

Together they botched the clean up job big time.

Even worse, no one thought to remove the hair left on the lathe after Leo slammed Mary’s head into it. Employees discovered the hair in the morning of Monday, April 28th 1913, and later Mr. Coleman, Mary Phagan’s step father would identify the hair as being Mary’s. That was another major blunder of Frank, he had the negro lackey sweep the floor and clean the bathroom, but he forgot about the hair that got on the lathe.

4pm: The Night Watch (“Night Witch”) Arrives

When Newt Lee finally arrived at work at a few minutes to 4pm, Frank was bustling with nervousness, frantic, agitated, frenzied and excited. Leo M. Frank in a wild frazzled and pumped-up state practically pushed Lee out of the building. Frank ordered a very tired and resistant Newt Lee to leave the factory, requiring Lee to come back to the factory in about 1.5 to 2.5 hours, have a good time and come back at 6PM or 6:30PM. Frank had one last hope Jim “James” Conley would hopefully come back for the potential $200 bribe offering and final clean up job, but alas, he was not returning that day, he was in drunk and happy lalaland back in his “nigger shack” (as Steve Oney accurately described what they looked like and were called at the time).

“What Time is It?”

Newt Lee made a strong resistant hesitation to leaving the factory, because he was exhausted, he had to come into work an hour earlier at 4pm instead of 5pm on Saturday April 26 1913 by Frank’s request made on Friday April 25 1913. Frank said he wanted to go to the baseball game, which he canceled after he murdered Phagan. When Newt Lee asked Frank if he could please sleep in the packing room for an hour or two, but Frank flatly refused, wouldn’t let him stay and was insistent that Newt Lee leave the factory and go out and have a good time – finally Leo Frank practically forced Newt Lee out of the factory. Newt Lee left and came back at a few minutes before 6pm , Frank was still in a panicked and nervous state, asking him in a frantic state what time it was, this was coming from the man who spent the last 5 years in front of a large faced time clock and meticulously recorded everything.

6:00 PM, Saturday, April 26, 1913

At 6PM, Frank told Newt, “Don’t punch yet!”, saying that he needed to change the time sheet. Newt watched Frank butterfinger and fumble with the changing of the time sheet in the time clock, his hands were bumbling and fumbling with it even after 5 years of changing the time sheets, it took him twice as long as usual. Normally Leo Frank could change the time sheet with his eyes closed, at that time his hands were jim jammin like jitterbugs in a frying pan. It was something Leo Frank could normally do with his eyes closed, blind folded and one hand tied behind his back, but today for some strange reason he was struggling with it. Newt went downstairs after he punched to smoke a fag, on a crate in the doorway downstairs. Frank frantically gathered his stuff, put on his hat and goat, then left the building briskly. As Frank exploded out of the door, he became terrified with horror when on the way out he ran into a former employee and bookkeeper named Gantt, and fell backward scared trying to practically crawl backward into the building, but it was too late – he had been spotted by Gantt and Newt Lee who was smoking finishing off his fag looked at Frank perplexedly. Frank knew that Gantt had known Mary and the Phagan family quite well. Frank was deeply relieved when he discovered that the former employee was there because he wanted to collect his shoes he left there in the factory previously and was not looking for the missing Mary Phagan who at this time had spent nearly 6 hours slow-rotting in the basement. As the former employee Gantt, had requested to go into the factory to get his shoes, Frank lied in a non-nonchalant manner to the former employee saying he had seen the Negro Jim Conley sweep them out of the factory, Frank was trying to get rid of Gantt without seeming overly concerned, However, Gantt outmaneuvered Frank by saying they were a different color, and Frank who was in no position to get into a heated debate, quickly acquiesced, Frank wanted to “get the hell out dodge” as soon as possible and as far from the building as possible, as he knew Phagan’s lifeless body was slumped on a saw dust pile in the basement would be discovered by the “Night Witch” during his rounds. James Milton Gantt convinced Frank to let him go in to the factory and Frank obliged with the caveat that Newt Lee must accompany him during the whole time. Gantt, found his shoes (both of them black and tan) in the packing room, which meant Leo Frank lied and Gantt left the building with Newt Lee closely following and monitoring. Newt Lee, then locked the front door and began his security rounds.

6:30PM, Saturday, April 26, 1913

When Frank got home at 6:30pm, he did something he had never done before with Newt Lee, he immediately called the factory but no one picked up the phone.

7PM

Then Frank called again at 7:00pm and Newt Lee finally picked up, Frank in a brisk frazzled voice asked if everything was Alright at the factory and when Newt Lee said Yes, Frank curtly said goodbye and slammed the phone. Frank had never called the factory on a Saturday or any other day for that matter before, to check up on things, according to Newt Lee who worked there for 3 weeks.

Frank also never asked about James Milton Gantt.

At the trial, Leo Frank said he called to see what the status was concerning Gantt, but Newt Lee said Frank did not ask about Gantt. Frank might have been calling the factory twice to see if Newt Lee discovered the body of Phagan, because Newt Lee was supposed to check every square inch of the factory during his rounds, but once the factory was locked up, Newt might have not gone all the way back into the rear of the basement or at all until the early morning of April 27th 1913 during his visit to the negro toilet to drop the Cosby’s off at the pool, but that was still about 8 hours away. Ironically, Leo Frank in his August 18 1913 trial testimony would make subtle complaints against Newt Lee for not finding the body sooner, henceforth throwing even more suspicion on his own two never before made phone calls to the factory at 6:30 and 7:00 PM on April 26th 1913. That evening Frank chain smoked cigarettes and guzzled booze like it was going out of style, he drank the liquor cabinet dry, he was attempting to medicate himself and his copious binging would ensure he would be badly hung over the next day and may have contributed to his inability to hide his guilt-revealing body language or it could have made him appear guilty because he was so worn out, pale, nervous and had a trembling hoarse voice, he would fire off questions at the police before they could answer the questions and fumbled with his shirt and tie.

April 27th 1913

At approximately 3:15 AM in the morning, the Negro Nightwatch named Newt Lee, during his lantern beholden factory rounds, went down to the cellar to use the negro latrine in the rear of the basement, the Cosby’s were knocking, and they were asking if they could use the pool in the back yard, when he finished his business, without wiping he pulled up his draws and pants, and buttoned up, he spotted and discovered the mangled twisted body of a little girl in the gloom of the rear of basement, about 150 feet back. When he approached the dead body, he noticed that her dress was pulled up and her underwear was torn and pulled down, soaked in blood and urine, and a cord was dug snug and deep into the tender flesh of her neck. Newt Lee got the hell out of dodge as quickly as he possibly could and called Leo Frank for nearly 10 minutes straight, but alas there was no answer, Leo was drunk as a skunk and passed out stone cold, finally giving up on ringing Frank, Newt Lee called the police station at 3:28AM and one of the biggest Jewish scandals of the early 20th century was about to unfold. Newt loped to the ladder at the beginning of front area of the basement and shimmied back up, he ran up the stairs, briskly going to the office to call Leo M. Frank. After nearly 10 minutes of trying to reach Leo M. Frank, Newt gave up and decided to call the police.

A Phone Call at Half Passed Three in the Morning, the Investigation Begins

The Police and Detectives were on the scene within minutes in their model T fords, they were left with the engines on, they were let in by Newt Lee who waited by the front door for them to arrive, and they went down the hatchway, descended the diagonal ladder with lanterns and flash lights, beginning their investigation. They noticed drag marks from the front of the elevator and lead all the way to the cinder / saw dust pile in front of the furnace. They found had to pull down a stocking to confirm the girl was White, because she had been dragged in the dirty floor. They found the contrived murder notes. Later that same morning and day, observing, and questioning countless associated and affiliated people, they immediately contacted an apprehensive Leo M. Frank at the crack of dawn because he was a senior level manager of the factory who had been at the virtually empty and shuttered factory that day. Frank resisted going with the police when they arrived because he wanted some Coffee and breakfast before going out with them, and Frank was very nervous, pale, trembling, fumbling with himself and was hung over badly with a hoarse voice. He fired questions at the police so quickly they didn’t have a chance to answer.

Frank Incriminated Himself

When Frank gave a number of incriminating statements, was betrayed by his body language and made several foolish mistakes and blunders that totally gave himself away, the intuitive police and detectives became very suspicious, with the result of Frank becoming prime suspect number one. After questioning Leo Frank and numerous other people, everything seemed to conclusively point in the direction of Leo M. Frank. Two days later, Leo Frank was arrested and detained on the morning of Tuesday, April 29 1913 at 11AM and later, he was indicted and finally his conviction on April 25 1913, which was affirmed by the Trial Judge the day after the verdict on August 26, 1913. It was this highly publicized event at the end of the trial that became one of the pre climaxes of the Leo M. Frank case, followed by a lynching 2 years later and in all, would define how Leo M. Frank would forever be remembered. The undertaker had also arrived afterward and they took the body out of the basement, up the ladder and to the mortuary to be placed on a cooling table. The dead child, was later identified by Grace Hicks the morning of April 27th 1913 as thirteen year old Mary Anne Phagan. Grace Hicks worked in the metal department on the second floor with Mary Phagan for about a year and was very familiar with her. Grace Hicks testified some very interesting details about the metal room, including the positioning of the dressing room and the layout of the bathrooms there and where Mary Phagan’s work station was in relation to them.

Police and Detective Investigation – April 27th 1913 Sunday

After police and detectives questioned Leo M. Frank, countless dozens of factory employees and arrested some affiliated people, all the evidence began pointing in one direction. Tuesday April 29 1913 Fifty Six hours after the body of Mary Phagan was discovered, the police and detectives had developed a very strong legitimate suspicion against Frank, their intuition was based the evidence and testimony they had gathered. Leo M. Frank was arrested on Tuesday, April 29th 1913 at 11AM, it was the last day of his freedom. Coroners Inquest Jury, Wednesday, April 30 1913.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The “Yankee Transplant”

At the behest of the Frank family patriarch, Leo Frank’s wealthy Uncle, Moses Frank (1841/2-1927), who was a major National Pencil Company (NPCo) Stock holder, the NPCo would hire the savvy bright young nephew from Brooklyn, NY, placing the IVY League educated 24-year old Leo Frank into a promising career at their Flagship factory in Atlanta. Leo Frank, would start his first day of work, Monday morning, August 10, 1908 (Leo Frank’s unsworn Trial Statement, BOE, August 18, 1913 at 2:00pm). By 1913 Leo Frank was married for nearly 3 years into a prominent Jewish family (1910), at the height of his career as the General Superintendent of the National Pencil Company in 1913, Leo had been president of the 500 member strong Atlanta chapter of the Jewish fraternal organization B’nai B’rith since 1912.

“Trial by Fire”, Five years in the making, 1908 to 1913

From Day one on Monday, August 10, 1908 to his last day on Tuesday, April 28, 1913 @ 11:30 AM, the clever and innately intelligent Leo M. Frank had learned the pencil manufacturing business inside out, including how things worked integrally within the accounting whole, from the raw materials, to final production of numerous pencil styles and variations (JC & LF, BOE, 1913). The National Pencil Company was a complex organism from the perspective of its directly affiliated material processing plant fiefdoms. The two separate sub-manufacturing dependencies (lead and cedar processing plants), part of the NPCo final production manufacturing facility, enabled the “parent company”, the National Pencil Company to thrive and thus taken together were thus critically important in the whole NPCo equation. As a result, the NPCo had slowly matured and developed quite successfully, in no small part because of Leo Frank’s years of leadership on the ground, juggling numerous complex operation variables, and holding the company together via long hours of service as its General Superintendent. By 1913, Leo Frank knew the manufacturing business inside and out, and the $2500 to $5000 a week in gross revenues in 1913 was proof of success when one considers the conversion of that money a week into 2013 FED Greenbacks.

Terminal Diagnosis Monday, April 28, 1913, 6:35 AM

Tragically the NPCo became terminally ill on Monday morning, April 28, 1913, when an early-bird employee named Robert P. Barret, entered the factory through the gloomy facade at 37-41 South Forsyth Street, Atlanta, Georgia, at 6:35 AM. Barret and another employee working in the same metal department would soon make forensic discoveries, whose implications would ensure eventual demise for the National Pencil Company, given their new revelations and conclusions about where the murder of Mary Phagan might have occurred.

3D Inside View of the Crime Scene in the National Pencil Company

Walk with Robert P. Barret From the National Pencil Company Ground Floor Lobby up to the Second Floor Metal Room in the Rear of the Building

Stepping into empty 14 foot high ceiling lobby of the NPCo, and after walking 10 paces forward toward the slight right diagonally, Robert P. Barret reached the base of the narrowish staircase that zig-zag ascending toward the darkness above, he climbed up 8 stairsteps, half way up the entire 14-foot tall stairwell, there was a flat break platform, the length and width of about 4 feet, bisecting it laterally were opened double doors (capable of being shut and locked, unrelated now, but a point of contention later according to Newt Lee), after passing through that open doorway with ease, and baring right, Barret continued from the platform another 8 stair steps up leading to the open lobby of the second floor. From the second floor lobby he turned left and walked straight down – eastward across the empty hallway toward the back of the factory about 50 to 75 feet, meeting and passing through the industrial glass paned double doors, known as the metal room doorway. Barret had entered the large work room area called the Metal Department, he had worked there for more than 6 weeks, and this area of the factory was infamously known as the “Metal Room” and Phagan worked there before she was temporarily laid off on Monday, April 21, 1913.

The Metal Room

The metal room department was a place where the final production stages of the pencil manufacturing process were completed. Mary Phagan toiled there for 10 to 11 hours a day, 5 to 6 days a week, over the last 13 months from the spring of 1912 to Monday, April 21, 1913, her section of the metalroom was room known as the the tipping department, it was there, using a knurling machine (Oney, 2003), she inserted rubber erasers into the brass bands attached at the end of last-stage production pencils.

Mary Phagan the youngest of five siblings was indeed a daughter of poverty given that she had to drop out of school at the age of 10 and go into the work force to help her family make ends meet. Mary Phagan was paid at a penny rate just shy of 7.5 cents an hour (7 and 4/11th cents an hour), drawing a pay envelope of $4.05 during a typical work week (John Milton Gantt, former paymaster of the NPCo, testifying at the Coroner’s Inquest, Atlanta Constitution, May, 1913).

Up Well Before the Crack of Dawn, Out the Door before 6:00 AM, Hustling to Get to Work Five Minutes Late!

The typical work day at the NPCo factory was 6:30 AM to 6:30 PM, with 30 minutes off for a quick lunch break and another perdiem of 30 minutes or less total time over the course of the day was allotted for short breaks, or various toilet visits. The only set of bathrooms on the second floor were located in the far left corner of the metal room – in the north east corner of the metal room (Leo Frank’s Defendants Exhibit, Brief of Evidence, 1913).

There that Monday morning on the 2nd floor of the NPCo in the metal room at 6:35 a.m., 20-year old Robert P. Barret arrived at his bench lathe work station (South East corner) to begin a new work week, which meant finishing where he had left off last Friday Evening, April 25, 1913, at 6:30 p.m.

TGIF! Friday, April 25, 1913, 6:30 PM. The Day Before Confederate Memorial Day

Between Friday Evening, April 25, 1913, 6:30 P.M. and Monday Morning, April 28, 1913, 6:35 A.M. was unofficially Confederate Memorial weekend that year. Confederate Memorial day was celebrated in 1913 on Saturday, April 26, it was a traditional State holiday in the South running nearly 50 years strong since the end of the civil war. Confederate Memorial Day was established on the 26th day of April in Georgia, unlike some of the other Southern States. Depending upon the decision of individual former Confederate States, the holiday was celebrated on various different days for state-specific reasons.

In 1913 Georgia, the coveted holiday fell on a symbolically gray and misty weekend day during the Spring, but during its 50 years of celebration, it had likely fallen on much worse weather days when one studies the weather data available. Confederate Memorial Day was a momentous Southern celebration, meant to honor and commemorate the surviving men and the fallen who fought for Southern Liberty and Independence (The Confederate States of the South, nicknamed, Dixie Land) against what many perceived as a Northern-Dominated tyrannical US Federal Government that threatened the traditional Southern Christian way of life. The parade exalted the dwindling number of surviving Southern soldiers who fought to break away and succeed from what most saw as an increasingly “Babylonian” and Yankee money dominated U.S. Federal Government, this view was reinforced by the reality of the South losing the Civil War, because in the aftermath of defeat, wealthy Northerners had flooded into the South for its cheap land and labor.

The Southern Confederacy was a dream for a visionary White separatist Christian Conservative government, as they believed their colonial forefathers originally had intended for the greater United States, but those dreams were dashed in a genetic holocaust with the loss of more than one million White European-American extended racial kinsmen, who had killed each other in a blood bath unlike any other in U.S. history. Appropriately, Confederate Memorial Day, Saturday, April 26, 1913, was a chilly, hazy-gray and face-spraying Saturday, it had been marred by an egregious tragedy unbeknownst to the giddy and somber public that day. The Georgian citizenry in Atlanta that day were divided along class and caste, one for opera and the other for the free Confederate Parade and festivities.

Sunday Morning, April 27, 1913, 3:24 AM

In the earliest morning hours of Sunday, April 27, 1913, a drunken sharksucker named Britt Craig, a dumb-luck journalist for the Atlanta Constitution, caught the scoop of a lifetime while leaning back in a chair at the Atlanta police station, puckering and suckling moonshine mixed with coca-cola, nursing it from the metal nipple of a small canteen, incognito. At about 3:24 AM, dispatch call officer Anderson heard the phone ring and answered a call from what sounded distinctly like a Negro based on his local and regional dialect or to use the more modern politically correct term: Ebonics.

The Negro caller was claiming to be the Nightwatchman Newt Lee from the National Pencil Company on 37-41 South Forsyth Street and he said he found the body of a murdered little White girl in the gloomy cellar there at the factory (BOE, Newt Lee, July 28 & 29, 1913). The police dispatched a car to the NPCo and the Case of the Mary Phagan Murder Mystery was born. The story was later distributed that morning in an EXTRA released after the usual Sunday morning edition of the Atlanta Constitution, April 27, 1913. It is unknown how many copies of this Extra survived into the 21st century, but back then it would be major breakthrough for the journalist career of Britt Craig.

It was all about to come to light, unbeknownst to Robert P. Barret, when he would make a startling discovery as he picked up where he had left off on his bench lathe. Other metal room employees began funneling into the room.

Finishing Where He Left Off

Robert P. Barrett’s bench lathe machine was a mounted tool he used for his job day to day, and it still had a piece of his work in it, one that he had left unfinished Friday, April 25, 1913, at 6:30 PM. It was Friday Evening, April 25, 1913, that Barrett helped as part of metal room staff, cleaning the metal room with other co-worker members, and with great relief, he collected his pay envelope from Leo Frank at the end of the day, and left immediately afterwards for home knowing the much anticipated State Holiday was tomorrow – Saturday, April 26, 1913.

His Hand Became Entangled Monday Morning, April 28, 1913 at 6:35 am.

As Robert P. Barret’s hand reached for the bench lathe handle, his fingers became tangled within a bloody tress (Robert P. Barret, Coroners Inquest, May, 1913) of what looked like it could be about 6 to 12 strands of hair pretzel wrapped around the handle of his lathe. Barret claims there was no entanglement of hair on the handle of his machine when he left the cleaned metal room on Friday evening, April 25, 1913 at 6:30 PM.

Flashing back to the discovery, Barret became perplexed over the forensic evidence and immediately called over another female employee who worked in the metal department, and together they began a thorough search of the immediate area. Fanning outward they eventually spotted something very unusual on the west side of the floor in front of the door to the girls dressing room attached to the Eastern most wall of the metal room.

6:45 A.M., Monday, April 28, 1913, What’s that on the Floor in front of the girl’s dressing room?

With perplexed curiosity in his outward fanning, expanding outward from his bench lathe toward the bathroom, when Barret examined the floor area in front of the ladies dressing room — just feet away from Mary Phagan’s workstation — he discovered a peculiar five inch wide white-pinkish-red stain that appeared to be bleeding through a white powdery substance. The shape of the stain was in a starburst spatter pattern with 6 to 8 tiny scattered droplets behind it as if crowning it off with rubies. The white-pinkish-red stain also appeared as if someone had used a coarse bristle broom to brush-smear it with either potash or haskolene over and into it — these two powdery lubricants were normally used for some of the work machines to ensure they ran smoothly.

The controversial moist stain would be claimed and interpreted as blood by the police, detectives, the employees that found it, Jim Conley and the State’s prosecution team. Police claimed they put alcohol in it and it dissolved, so they believed it wasn’t varnish.

By the Leo M. Frank defense legal dream team, the stain was either created by an employee who cut his hand 8 months prior to the murder in October 1912 or red varnish paint that might have been spilled on the floor at some unknown but possibly recent time. The controversial floor stain would become one of the biggest issues of contention then in 1913 and now more than ever 100 years later as the Leo Frank case is fiercely debated.

The Flood Gates Opened, Monday Morning, April 28, 1913

With about 170 teen and preteen child laborers due to work that early morning, funneling through, and tripping into the 4-story ominous archway of the NPCo, the front door bottleneck became a human logjam of chit chatting and shuffling child laborers pressed against each other stomping their way up the staircase. Word spread like wildfire about Mary Phagan’s death, including how she was discovered slumped on a low saw dust pile within the cellar furnace staging area, possibly outraged (raped), battered and garroted (strangled) – but the basement murder theory was about to fall to pieces… within the absolute terror erupting and permeating throughout the dingy 4-story manufacturing plant!

As to be expected the imaginations of more than 100 child laborers went hog wild.

The discovery of forensic evidence in the metal room became a morbid spectacle, because of what it suggested to all of those employees who flocked to the scene that day. The newly discovered forensic evidence found on Monday morning, April 28, 1913, was at first an unusual link in the possible chain of evidence and events, because the murder discovery made the day before (Sunday, April 27, 1913 at 3:20 AM) by Newt Lee, was 2 stories below in the catacomb-like basement. And as a result of word traveling so quickly, countless dozens of employees would flock to witness the metal room floor blood stain and dried blood hair spectacle on the handle of the bench lathe.

Completely horrified and appalled an ensuing high drama of pre-teen and teenaged girls became dizzyingly mad with broken down grief, infectiously, as the terror-shocked girls descended into face swollen tears. Commiserating with them the male employees who were in a state of disbelief and shock. Nearly 170 employees in the building that day had attained group hysteria.

The unraveling of work place calm before the storm-front was inspired by the impetus of children’s imaginations. The work force erupted into total rebellion as the permutations of mental imagery effectively exhausted the labor forces work moral beyond any real measure of recovery that day, it was foreshadowing for what was to become of the NPCo, because of the stigma surrounding it. The whole factory essentially shut down resulting in the mass sorrow, gossip, speculation and loafing, because the evidence found in the second floor metal room meant the murder did not originally happen in the basement, but possibly began there in the metal room, the place where Mary Phagan had toiled for the last year.

And in the traumatized minds of more than 100++ child laborers working in the factory, each of them knew it could have easily been one of them had circumstances been slightly different.

The April 28, 1913, Monday morning metal room revelation would later that day prove to become a defining point for the half-stumped, dumbfounded and unsophisticated Atlanta police investigators trying to figure out who killed Mary Phagan. The metal room revelation was also partly embarrassing for “Atlanta’s Finest” too, because after their first contact with the dead body of Mary Phagan on Sunday morning, April 27, 1913 at 3:45 AM, the police scoured the 4-floor factory building in the pitch black darkest hours and had overlooked the lock of bloody strands of long hair pretzel wrapped around the bench lathe handle, suspended in time and space as powerful forensic evidence. Even more embarrassing the police completely missed the odd and partially obscured blood stain on the greasy wooden floorboards at the entrance of the girls dressing room within the metal room, especially given the fact it wasn’t reported as small, but a five inch wide fan shaped spatter pattern crowned with crimson droplets.

Where was Leo Frank while all of this was happening?

On Monday the 28th day of April, while this illuminating post-sunrise discovery on the second floor of the National Pencil Company was playing out, Superintendent Leo Frank was sitting in the hot seat at the police station waiting for his lawyer so he could begin another round of standard and procedural questioning, as part of an investigation into the murder of Mary Phagan.

Attorneys Luther Zeigler Rosser and Herbert Haas had arrived after a patient Leo Frank waited for them before questioning could begin. When they were all fully present in the interrogation room, the questioning began, Luther Zeigler Rosser arrived and stood with his back to the window, and Leo Frank’s butt was firmly glued to one of the hard wooden chairs. With a fleet of detectives encompassing Leo Frank, it would be during this morning session he uttered his fatal State’s Exhibit B to an official government stenographer named Mr. G. C. February – the magistrate was pecking away at the cramped keys, transcribing the Atlanta Police Officer’s questions and Leo Franks answers, however, the sessions record would later be stitched together on an old fashioned typewriter with only Leo Franks stenographed answers typed up alone in a sequence of sentences, without the specific police questions asked of Frank added in the document.

State’s Exhibit B was the unsigned document submitted as part of the integral and concatenated circumstantial evidence for the State’s prosecution at the trial of Leo M. Frank, and it became the basis for the State’s theory Leo Frank murdered Mary Anne Phagan (1899 to 1913) on Saturday, April 26, 1913, between 12:05 p.m. and 12:10 p.m., Maybe 12:07 p.m.

Wrongful Death Lawsuit 1915+

As the the two painfully cringing years of appeals worked their way through the appellate courts to their final conclusion in the United States Supreme Court, April 1915, Mary Phagan’s mother Mrs. Frances E. L. Coleman, onward 1915, would succeed in suing the National Pencil Company for a huge sum of money at the time, Ten Grand ($10,000), it was over the wrongful death of her daughter, strangled noonish, April 26, 1913. Though Phagan’s mother won the case, she only collected about $1,500 of the money (Koenigsberg, 2012). Tom Watson through his Jeffersonian Newspaper had some controversial things to say about this lawsuit during the height of the sheet’s ferocity against Frank from 1914 and 1917.

Overdue Bill

The private detectives hired originally by Sigmund Montag on behalf of Leo Frank — to “ferret out the real murderer, whoever it might be” — known as the world renowned National Pinkerton Detective Agency, sued the National Pencil Company for an unpaid detective bill of a little more than about a grand and change. The mood of the National Pencil Company leadership was in a state of upset as they felt their statement, “ferret out the real murderer” was meant to pay public lip service to show the local masses they really cared about solving the murder of Mary Phagan. Sigmund Montag and Leo Frank ultimately expected the Pinkertons to protect the interests of the NPCo, afterall they were paying the bill. Little did they know police, investigators and detectives stick with their own kind, regardless of the alleged local ordinance in place requiring private detectives to share their discoveries with police.

When the Pinkerton detective Harry Scott reviewed every single detail of the case he had gathered and processed them with his seasoned intuition, he thought with absolute mathematical certainty it was Leo Frank who committed the murder of Mary Phagan, so much so, that he might have embellished and fabricated evidence against Leo Frank at the trial with an, ‘I Don’t Know’, instead of a ‘No!’. The controversy concerning Harry Scott over Leo Frank’s verbal response to Mary Phagan about her question to him, “Has the Metal Come?” has led some Leo Frank authors like Dinnerstein and Goldfarb to believe Leo Frank was framed.

Pinkertons Betray NPCo

The NPCo felt betrayed because they didn’t like the outcome of “ferret out the real murderer, whoever it might be” or the controversial statement of Harry Scott at the Leo Frank trial. Thus the NPCo with-held payment for the Pinkerton work concerning the independent private investigation of the Mary Phagan murder mystery.

Both cases (Frances Phagan and Harry Scott) were won and one appealed, they would surely be interesting reading (see Steven J. Goldfarb) as the Pinkerton case revealed a tidbit of details not given at the 1913 Leo Frank trial. In 1915, Harry Scott on the witness stand recalled, the “insecure nature all the way through” of Leo Frank’s eyes, when Leo was originally being questioned in detail about Mary Phagan during the murder investigation. Did Harry Scott misread Leo Frank?

An interesting corroboration of Pinkerton Detective Harry Scott’s observation of Leo Frank’s “Insecure Eyes”, came from newspaper journalists writing about the Leo M. Frank trial, journalists in the courtroom noticed Leo Frank averted his eyes and would not look at Mary Phagan’s mother while she was on the witness stand. Pinkerton Detective Harry Scott also found it a smidgen odd, that Leo Frank claimed he did not know Mary Phagan, but later said that John Milton Gantt had been “intimate” with Mary Phagan. Harry Scott wondered how could Leo Frank not know Mary Phagan, but know something so personal about her at the same time. However the real clincher was ultimately what Leo Frank said on two separate days about Newt Lee’s time card punches that turned the case upside down when it was thoroughly investigated. Leo Frank’s Defendant Exhibit 1, Newt Lee’s timecard and it’s four missed punches suggested Newt Lee knew more about the murder than he was telling police.

The End of the Grave Yard Shift: Sunday Morning, April 27, 1913, How it Played Out

On Sunday Morning, April 27, 1913, after being taken to the undertaker’s, P.J. Bloomfield, Leo Frank was taken into his second floor office at the National Pencil Company on 37 to 41 South Forsyth Street, he was still accompanied by the police after viewing Mary Phagan’s corpse at P.J. Bloomfields Mortuary. With the police closely following behind, Leo Frank approached the wall time clock, he took the nightwatchman Newt Lee’s time slip out from it, and began examining the scheduled punches from the evening of April 26 to the early morning of April 27. Foreman N.V. Darley was present and standing next to Leo when he examined the timecard. With police curiously looking over Leo Frank’s shoulder at the time slip, Leo Frank slowly passed his eyes down from the top of the time card starting from 6PM on April 26, 1913, down to 3AM on April 27, 1913, Leo Frank verbally confirmed that Newt Lee correctly punched the time clock every half hour as he was supposed to during his graveyard shift security rounds. The police presumed that after five years of experience examining timecards, Leo Frank had trained his eyes and mind to be able to do this task correctly and with ease. Leo Frank then put the time card in his 4 ft. tall safe in his office anteroom.

Was Leo Frank so nervous that morning he might have misread Newt Lee’s perfectly punched time card?

Hired only three weeks before April 26, 1913, Newt Lee was employed as the factory nightwatchman, before that he worked for the Georgia Cedar company. It was Newt Lee’s job to do security rounds during the graveyard shift, which involved walking across each of the four levels of the National Pencil Company building with his smokey lantern. Newt Lee was required to punch the time clock in Leo Frank’s office every half an hour and he had never missed a punch before. By Leo Frank saying Newt Lee’s time card was punched correctly every half hour, it tended to give credence that Newt Lee was present in the factory that evening and morning, and doing as he was expected by the book. The police equally felt that because Newt Lee had punched his card regularly as expected according to Leo Frank and also reported seeing the body of Mary Phagan within minutes after he had discovered her body, Lee was acting in general accordance with what might be considered normal behavior.

There was no question, Leo Frank on Sunday, April 27, 1913, said Newt Lee’s time card was punched perfectly every half hour from 6:00 p.m. on April 26 to 3:00 a.m. on April 27, with an abrupt stop.

On Monday, April 28, 1913, Leo Frank made intimations that Newt Lee did not punch his card correctly and that there were three (not four) places on his time card that Newt Lee did not punch every half hour as he should have, Leo showed the police this new timecard and it was also submitted by the Leo M. Frank legal defense team at the murder trial as Defendant’s Exhibit 1 (BOE, 1913).

The implication was that Newt Lee had 3 or 4 separate one hour segments of unaccounted-for-time he could have left the factory or his whereabouts were simply unknown, naturally causing suspicion directed toward him. When the police juxtaposed this newfangled time card against the “murder notes” or “death notes” implicating the “night witch”, it was beginning to look really bad for Newt Lee the nightwatchman. The suppositions of the “death notes” found next to the strangled body of Mary Phagan accusing the “Night Witch” of sexual assault turned all eyes on Leo Frank once the metal room forensic evidence was revealed in the afternoon of Monday, April 28, 1913, because the origin of the murder came into question.

Leo Frank’s Second Floor Office

At the trial, defense witness Pinkerton Detective Harry Scott, claimed a typo in his early reports (Defendant’s Exhibit 91, 92, 93), and told a stunned courtroom that Leo Frank privately admitted to him about a conversation with Mary Phagan in his office on April 26, 1913, more specifically, that when Mary Phagan asked Leo Frank if the metal had come, Leo Frank responded to Mary Phagan with, “I Don’t Know”, instead of “No”. At the trial Leo Frank would claim he said “No” to Phagan’s metal question.

I Don’t Know

The “I Don’t Know” testimony of Pinkerton Detective Harry Scott opened the mental doorway of time and space, creating the visual of Leo and Mary walking together from Leo Frank’s second floor inner office, through the outer office, down the hall to the metal room door, passing into the metal room, for the purpose of finding out if the brass sheets had arrived or not. It was powerful 3D imagery that visually put Leo Frank and Mary Phagan in the metal room the alleged crime scene.

An experienced detective is the equivalent of a seasoned psychologist in terms of being able to read body language and asking the right questions to dig deep and evaluate the answers by reading between the lines.

The excuse that Leo Frank was only nervous during the investigation because of what he saw at P.J. Bloomfield’s mortuary was not entirely believable, especially when the Jury examined Leo Frank’s demeanor for a month as he sat un-obscured, with nothing between himself, and the jury. At the trial Leo Frank was acting invincibly calm, cool and collected, after he appeared emaciated and frightened his first few days.

What was never adequately answered by Leo Frank or any Leo Frank partisans over the last 100 years is about Nightwatchman Newt Lee at the trial saying Leo Frank requested Lee come to work an hour early and upon arrival of Newt, he noticed Leo was acting noticeably nervous, bustling and frenetic, on the afternoon of April 26, 1913, suspiciously and assertively requesting that Newt Lee must leave the building for 2 hours or no more than 2.5 hours and “have a good time”, despite Newt Lee requesting to take a nap in the packing room.

The Fatal Blow

The National Pencil Company, destined for financial and business greatness in the golden future of the roaring 20’s, as a possible world class international pencil company to rival Eberhard-faber someday, imploded financially, and suffered a tragic death in the bowels of Jewish history, all because of one infatuated man frustrated with a little girl that spurned his sexual advances.

The NPCo went bankrupt, as to be expected and ceased to exist in 1916.

The Anti-Semitic View:

The whole 1913 to 1986 Leo Frank affair became dark bloody forensic stains on the chapter of 20th century Jewish American history in the United States, not because of one man named Leo Frank, but because countless Jewish individuals, Jewish groups and a variety of powerful Jewish interests have attempted aggressively to rehabilitate the image and reputation of Leo Max Frank for more than 100 years in the most treacherous, subversive, criminal and perfidious ways. Anti-Semites believe this was the birth of the genetic culture wars between Jews and Gentiles that began Confederate Memorial Day, April 26, 1913. Anti-Semites believe Jews are a tiny and powerful minority that have set the cultural course of Western Civilization on an irreversible terminal path.

Moses Frank hired his nephew Leo Frank because of his genuine academic credentials and his personification of German engineering, training and qualifications. Moses Frank was the old angel investor and one of the major stock holder who in great part made the National Pencil Company possible, and he was no where to be found at the Leo Frank trial, just like his brother, Leo Frank’s Father, Rudolph Frank. Moses is said to have left Atlanta, April 21, 1913, for Brooklyn NY, just before embarking on another sojourn to Europe with his 20-years-younger second wife Sara Frank.

Why was Leo Frank keeping his Uncle Moses abreast of the holiday and work at the factory?

A very contrived letter (see images) was allegedly mailed to Moses Frank on April 26, 1913, written by Leo Frank in the time range of the Phagan murder, and it was erroneously submitted as evidence by the Leo M. Frank legal defense dream team. The condescendingly dark and morbid letter was meant to show the court Leo Frank’s very “calm, aloof and zen like” state of mind on the day of the murder, and though it was added as evidence at the trial, Dorsey made a mockery of its contents.

Some Neutral observes think Leo Frank was drunk or high on drugs with his reference to the “Thin Gray Line?”, why would Leo Frank morbidly mock his Uncle Moses Frank with death, the man who was regarded as the patriarch of the Frank family, born in 1842, he was 72 years old at the time, when the average life expectancy was 46 years… and… “Nothing Starting at the factory”?! The Leo Frank affair would become a case of reading between the lines.

Moses Frank disappeared into the woodwork and was sure to slip off for the German Empire on a business and pleasure trip with his young wife Sara Frank, thus making it virtually impossible for Dorsey to subpoena Moses. The outer portion of the letter was never recovered as might be normally expected, but a typed version was submitted instead of the original hand written letter and envelope, questions about its unusual contents, style and message emerged (Koenigsberg, The Leo Frank Case, Opened or Closed, 2011).

The Devils in the Details.

Get ready to learn the intricate details about the most unusual and contentious murder cases within the annals of early 20th century U.S. history, what it revealed, and why some believe it has turned into a 100 year strong conflict between Jews and Gentiles for the destiny of Western Civilization’s culture and future.

If you want to ask one of the worlds foremost Leo M. Frank scholar questions about the Leo Max Frank case, contact Allen Koenigsberg. Post your public questions: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LeoFrankCase/. The Leo Frank Case Library and Archive (www.LeoFrank.org) is not affiliated with Allen Koenigsberg and the Leo Frank Yahoo Discussion Group.